Motorcycle riding offers freedom and excitement, but this thrill comes with risks. One of the most common is road rash—a severe skin and tissue injury you can gain from sliding across the pavement during an accident. This injury can significantly affect a victim’s life, causing pain and discomfort, requiring extensive medical treatment, and leaving permanent scars.
If you suffer road rash, you should not have to face the physical, emotional, and financial toll alone. By hiring an experienced motorcycle accident lawyer in Atlanta to handle your road rash injury claim, you can maximize your chances of receiving full, fair compensation.
Road Rash Is a Significant Personal Injury
Motorcyclists who suffer road rash in a wreck usually have the right to pursue a personal injury claim for damages against the party (or parties) responsible for causing the crash. While the phrase road rash might sound minor, in the eyes of the law, it is anything but.
Road rash can be a severe injury that causes serious damage to your skin and soft tissue, like a burn. This painful, debilitating form of trauma can drastically affect your quality of life temporarily or even permanently.
After an accident that causes road rash, you might require skin-grafting surgeries, which involve prolonged hospital stays and intensive rehabilitation. That can lead to substantial medical bills, loss of income due to inability to work, and immense pain and suffering.
Road rash injuries can also have significant long-term impacts. Severe cases can lead to debilitating physical consequences, such as nerve damage, skin infections, or permanent scarring. Emotional consequences can be equally severe and may include post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, or depression, which can hamper your quality of life, interfering with your long-term ability to work, engage in daily activities, and maintain relationships.
Who Is Liable for Road Rash?
Anyone who causes a motorcycle accident through careless, reckless, or intentional misconduct can have liability for a biker’s road rash injury.
Depending on the facts of a crash, the liable party could include:
- The driver of a speeding car or truck that collides with a motorcycle.
- The employer of the driver of a commercial or work vehicle that hits a biker.
- A motorcycle manufacturer if a defect in a bike causes the crash.
- A government agency contractor responsible for unreasonably hazardous road conditions unsafe for motorcycling.
These are just a few examples. Any individual, business, government agency, or other entity may face liability to a biker for causing a wreck resulting in road rash. Multiple parties can bear simultaneous liability. The most reliable way to find out who might owe you compensation for the road rash you suffered in a motorcycle accident is to call an experienced attorney today.
Potential Compensation for Road Rash
If you suffer road rash in an accident, you can typically seek compensation for a range of damages.
These can include payment for your:
- Medical expenses in treating road rash, including those for hospitalization, surgeries, therapy, rehabilitation, and medication.
- Costs of repairing or replacing your damaged motorcycle or other personal property.
- Other expenses associated with recovering from a road rash injury.
- Loss of income and job benefits from missing work while healing from road rash.
- Lost future earnings or opportunities due to a disabling road rash injury.
- Physical pain from road rash or medical treatments.
- Emotional suffering that the trauma of the accident caused.
- Diminished quality of life.
- Scarring, disfigurement, or loss of bodily function.
Sometimes, you can also receive additional compensation, such as punitive damages that punish the at-fault party for extreme or malicious conduct. Talk to an experienced motorcycle accident lawyer today to learn about the compensation you could claim after suffering a road rash injury in a bike wreck.
What a Lawyer Can Do for a Road Rash Victim
A lawyer’s main job in a motorcycle accident case involving road rash is to secure compensation for your losses. Lawyers seek to accomplish that goal by taking various steps on your behalf. Here are some roles a lawyer plays in a road rash case.
Conducting a Motorcycle Accident Investigation
An investigation into the crash is often a lawyer’s first step in representing a biker suffering from a road rash injury. A lawyer can gather all available evidence to discern what happened, such as police reports, witness testimonies, photographs of the accident scene, and video footage. A lawyer can analyze that evidence—with the help of accident reconstruction experts when necessary—to determine how the accident happened and who was at fault.
Sometimes, the sole liable party in a motorcycle accident is obvious. In other cases, though, it can take a careful examination of the facts to pinpoint multiple parties who are at least partly responsible for your road rash injury. A lawyer’s investigation seeks to identify every party who may have liability to maximize your chances of recovering fair compensation.
Evaluating Your Damages
An accurate calculation of your damages involves estimating the cost of current and future medical care, lost income, and pain and suffering. A lawyer can assess those losses and calculate their total value. This ensures that any legal action against a party liable for your road rash seeks the maximum amount allowable by law.
Communicating With Insurance Companies
In any road rash injury case, communication with the at-fault party’s insurance company is inevitable. Liability insurers typically cover an accident victim’s losses. A lawyer can handle these interactions on your behalf, relieving you from the burden of dealing with insurance company representatives and protecting you from tactics insurers often use to undermine claims and reduce payouts.
Preparing and Filing Insurance Claims and Lawsuits
Having investigated and evaluated the motorcycle accident that left you suffering from road rash, a lawyer can prepare and submit the paperwork necessary to demand payment from at-fault parties and insurance companies. By filing insurance claims and lawsuits on your behalf, a lawyer initiates the legal processes that can lead to compensation for road rash and other losses.
Negotiating With the Liable Party (or Parties) and Their Insurance Companies
Often, initiating insurance claims or lawsuits leads to negotiations between the lawyer and representatives of the at-fault party or that party’s insurer. Most motorcycle accident cases settle through these sorts of negotiations.
In negotiating, a lawyer convinces the liable parties to pay the maximum amount possible to compensate you for the range of road rash-inflicted damages. The lawyer then advises you whether to accept or reject any settlement offers those parties make. The final decision of whether to settle rests with you.
Going to Court to Prove a Case for Road Rash Damages
Sometimes, only a courtroom trial with a jury or judge can resolve a legal dispute over road rash damages. At trial, the lawyer presents evidence and legal arguments proving your case and responds to whatever evidence or arguments the at-fault parties present in their defense.
Even though most motorcycle accident road rash claims settle without going to court, experienced motorcycle accident lawyers always prepare their cases as if they might. So, no matter what direction a case takes, they always prepare to go the distance for you.
Advising You
A lawyer can also serve as a trusted advisor when you are recovering from a road rash injury. Life after a motorcycle accident can feel overwhelming. You and your loved ones can struggle to know where to turn for help or whose advice to take.
Seasoned motorcycle accident lawyers have shepherded numerous clients through similar difficulties and can draw on that experience to assist you in making important personal decisions and plans.
Although a lawyer’s principal job is to get the maximum available compensation for a road rash injury, many clients find that the role the lawyer plays as a counselor and sounding board is equally as valuable.
You Can Afford to Hire a Motorcycle Accident Lawyer After Suffering a Road Rash Injury Is Affordable
Motorcyclists injured in wrecks that cause them to suffer road rash often worry about the cost of hiring a lawyer to handle their injury case, although it is not normally expensive for a biker to hire a motorcycle accident lawyer to represent them.
Most motorcycle accident injury attorneys offer free consultations for potential clients. You and your loved ones can use a consultation to get to know a lawyer and learn about your potential legal options for pursuing compensation. Consultations are usually free, even if you decide against proceeding with legal action.
Motorcycle accident lawyers also routinely work for their injured clients on a contingency fee basis, which means they do not charge upfront retainers or hourly rates for their services. Instead, their fee consists of a percentage of any money that they secure on your behalf. In other words, you pay them nothing unless they get you results.
Why You Must Hire a Motorcycle Accident Lawyer Immediately
After a motorcycle accident, it’s important to secure legal representation as quickly as possible. Any delay could affect your ability to recover compensation for current and future damages.
You can start a claim or personal injury lawsuit for road rash damages during a limited window of time—a statute of limitations. Missing that deadline amounts to losing your legal right to compensation. Hiring a lawyer immediately prevents that from happening.
Lawyers act swiftly to locate and preserve evidence vital to proving your road rash injury claim. Bringing a lawyer on board as soon as possible improves the odds of obtaining that evidence.
Tips for Finding the Right Lawyer to Handle Your Road Rash Claim
To find the right lawyer to handle your motorcycle accident case:
- Ask friends, family, and other contacts in the motorcycle community for recommendations of lawyers who handle motorcycle accident cases.
- Read online reviews to learn how former clients and other professionals in the legal community view the lawyer.
- Look for lawyers who focus on motorcycle accident cases, as they likely have the most experience and best skills necessary to handle a case for a road rash injury.
- Use free consultations with lawyers to learn about their services and personality.
- Inquire about the lawyer’s fee structure and other methods of funding your case.
- Talk to several lawyers before deciding on the right one to hire.
Prepare for your consultations with motorcycle accident lawyers by gathering any documentation you’ve saved about your wreck, medical treatments, insurance coverage, and expenses.
The more information you can share about your accident and injuries in an initial consultation, the better your chances of finding the right lawyer to handle your claim. Everything you share with a lawyer in an initial consultation stays confidential, even if you decide not to hire them.
Contact an Experienced Motorcycle Accident Lawyer Today
If you or a loved one recently suffered a road rash injury in a motorcycle accident, you may have the legal right to receive significant compensation. But payment is not a certainty. The most reliable way to maximize your chances of receiving the maximum monetary damages is to hire a skilled motorcycle accident lawyer to handle your claim.
Do not wait to get the legal help you need. Contact an experienced motorcycle accident injury lawyer today for your free consultation.